IELTS Online: Course

How to assess your grammatical range and accuracy

This lesson provides a checklist to help you focus on and assess your use of grammar. It includes some of the more common grammatical errors made by candidates taking the IELTS Speaking test.

It is important that you use grammar appropriately, so you do not need to use all of the grammatical points in the checklist in all of your answers. You may find you have no problems with the areas covered in the checklist, but that you have other problems such as subject–verb agreement or singular and plural forms of nouns. Try to identify any problem areas that you have with grammar and work on improving them.

How can you assess your grammar?

Step 1 Record yourself
Step 2 Listen and write down what you have said on a piece of paper.
Step 3 Answer the questions on the checklist below.

Grammar checklist	Yes	No
Grammatical range
Simple, compound and complex sentences
* Did you use a range of sentence structures?
* Did you use a variety of conjunctions?
Grammatical accuracy
Verb tense
* Did you use the correct tense?
Modal verbs
* Did you use modal verbs appropriately?
Articles
* Did you use correct articles?
Comparatives and superlatives
* Did you use comparatives and superlatives correctly?
Conditionals
* Did you use conditionals correctly?
* Can you find any other grammar problems?

Now, let’s practise how to use this checklist.